As I discovered before I went to bed last night, all day yesterday I did in fact have two lenses in my right eye. The one I ‘lost’ was all scrunched up under my eyelid or something.

Today, at Lisa’s party, the one in my left eye got similarly ‘lost’ and I had to blink it out and put it back in. Luckily Cindy had left some lens solution stuff in the spare bathroom.

But seriously, to repeat, all day Friday I had two contact lenses in one eye.

I WAS RIGHT.

…I lost one of my lenses this morning. Less than twelve hours after receiving them.

What’s weird is, I don’t remember losing it. I remember failing to put it in my eye four thousand times then not having it. I thought it was in, because I’m still not sure about when they’re in (I’ve only done this twice now, you see). So I gave myself all these vision tests (well, down the hall, can you read that? No, but can I read that with my glasses? I don’t know.) and established that it probably wasn’t in my eye. I put the other one in, to compare, and spent a long time staring at my eyes and seeing if I could see the edge of the lens. I decided I could see the edge of the lens in my left eye, but not my right, so the right lens must not have gone in. So I opened another one and put that in. First try, mind you. Little bastards.

But the whole day—and when I say “the whole day” here, I mean “from 10 am to midnight, when I got home from fucking work”—THE WHOLE DAY—I remained convinced that there were two lenses in my right eye, and that the one I’d lost had worked its way around back and was embedded in my brain.

I just took them out (two of them, not three) and decided there is not, in fact, another lens in my right eye. BUT I CAN’T BE SURE.

Today I got contact lenses.

I had an eye exam on Tuesday, during which I was prescribed and ordered new glasses, which will be ready next week. I’m doing this, as should be obvious, to take advantage of my vision insurance before I quit. While I was there, I asked about contacts. I’d never thought seriously about getting them before; I was seriously squicked at the idea of sticking my fingers in my eyes.

The doctor measured the curvature of my eyes with a different instrument and said (news to me) that I have a slight astigmatism, so I’d have to use these certain lenses (for instance, I couldn’t get purple ones). And that if I was still interested knowing that, I needed to come back in to take a class, have a followup exam with the lenses in my eyes, and buy the lenses. So I scheduled that for today.

The class consisted of me and a girl with really big eyes. It was SO frustrating not being able to pull my eyelids as wide open as she could. She told me if I couldn’t get them in by myself within 30 minutes, I’d have to reschedule. I felt like it was a test or a deadline, and the frustration actually made me cry when I couldn’t do it at first.

But eventually I got it. The second one went in easier than the first one, and after the exam when I had to do it again, it was even easier. So it will get easier. I was pleased with myself for doing it, and she said I got it pretty quickly. I don’t think even 20 of my allotted 30 minutes had passed.

I’ve worn glasses every day since about 1991. Every goddamn day. And today? Today I am NOT.

Everything looks just slightly different. The computer screen, for instance, looks VERY different. I’m not sure why, but my theory is that I’ve been compensating for the way my glasses made it look, and I can’t do that now, because I can’t really focus my eyes independently of the lenses. It’s WEIRD. 🙂 But not bad.